Tag Archive | summer

Boys, Bears, and a Serious Pair of Hiking Boots, by Abby McDonald (book review) – city girl in Canadian mountain town

Jun24

book cover of Boys, Bears, and a Serious Pair of Hiking Boots by Abby McDonaldFor Fun Friday, we’re heading north of the border. I can see why Jenna would rather spend her summer with the godmother she hasn’t seen in years, instead of sweltering in a Florida retirement community with her grandma – it’s been ridiculously hot in C.Florida this summer already and there’s only so much bingo that a teen wants to deal with…

But how could she be prepared for a small community in the Canadian forest, where hunting and fishing are essential parts of life, a one-horse town where everyone has known everyone forever?

Oh, I did laugh out loud when Jenna, the kayak, and the beaver lodge had a sudden meeting, but Jenna’s summer looks like an uphill climb, doesn’t it? And what about the bear, and the moose, and the mountain biking? Well, you’ll just have to read this funny book to find out, eh?
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Book info: Boys, Bears, and a Serious Pair of Hiking Boots / Abby McDonald. Candlewick, 2010. [author’s website] [publisher site] [book trailer] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

My Book Talk: Jenna is a Green Teen for environmental awareness at her high school, so when she can choose between spending the summer in the Canadian woods with her godmother Susie or snoozing through card games at her grandmother’s Florida retirement village, she jumps at the chance to head north.

But the teens of tiny Stillwater, British Columbia, have known each other forever and don’t exactly welcome Jenna. Ethan, Grady, and Reeve play practical jokes on her from the moment they meet. Fiona hates everything, especially her stepmother, Susie, who works frantically with her new husband to transform a huge old house into a bed-and-breakfast resort before the first guests arrive in a few weeks. And Jenna’s best friend doesn’t get much cellphone signal at her summer camp job back home… what else could go wrong?

How about crashing through a beaver dam with her kayak or accidentally catching a trout? “I left the cork on the hook! I didn’t think anything would actually bite!” screams vegetarian Jenna.

The five teens start to get along as they create a website (complete with videos of Jenna’s rookie attempts at rock climbing and dirt bikes) so the inn can compete with the new luxury spa hotel across the valley, but secrets and misunderstood kisses may end the whole summer with a crash!

Does everything have to be eco-friendly or else? What makes a true friend? Why do guys have to be so complicated? (and watch out for the bear, Jenna, and the moose, too!)(One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

Clarity, by Kim Harrington (book review) – psychic gift or curse?

Jun20

book cover of Clarity by Kim HarringtonIt’s a mystical Monday. What’s your ideal summer job? Bet it’s not like Clare’s, where “the family business” uses the psychic gifts of the Ferns.

Her brother loves summer, when he can romance the visiting girls – what local high school girl would date a guy who gets messages from dead people?

The Ferns can tell tourists about hidden things which have happened in the past, but the new psychic in town starts taking away their customers by promising that she can predict the future.

Add a murder to the summer crowds during an election year, and suddenly Clare’s gift for psychometry is in demand by the local authorities.

Kim Harrington says that Perception (Clarity #2) is due out in March 2012. Hope YA paranormal fans can wait that long! (She’s also writing a middle grades detective series, due out next summer).
**kmm

Book info: Clarity / by Kim Harrington. Point (Scholastic), 2011. [author’s website] [author’s blog] [publisher site] [book trailer]

My Book Talk: Just another summer at the family psychic business, where Clare sees what happened with an object by just touching it, brother Perry sees spirits, and Mom hears people’s thoughts. They can’t predict the future, but Cape Cod tourists wanting answers keep them in business.

Too bad the town residents aren’t as accepting of the Ferns – Clarity and Periwinkle (named by hippie parents) have been bullied and scorned ever since their gifts began to manifest. Just another year of high school and they can escape to somewhere else… especially after Clare’s only boyfriend cheated on her.

A murder – the first in decades –shocks everyone on the Fourth of July weekend. The mayor is up for re-election and asks Clare to help the police find clues. So she’s stuck with the mayor’s son (her ex-boyfriend) and the new detective’s son (completely anti-psychics) as she visits the murder scene… and finds that Perry was with the woman before she died! He assures Clare that he did not kill the woman, but they’re not sure that the police will understand visions instead of evidence.

On tourist row, a new psychic arrives, saying she can foretell the future and luring clients away from the Ferns. Perry disappears when a witness states that he was seen leaving a restaurant with the victim. Clare’s worst bullies boast about inside knowledge, then vanish.

How can Clare keep working with Justin when she still can’t forgive him? How can she convince Gabe that her visions are the truth (without telling too much)? Can Clare find the real killer without becoming the next victim? (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

Who Is Frances Rain? by Margaret Buffie (fiction) – family squabbles, Gold Rush ghost

Jun3
book cover of Who is Frances Rain by Margaret Buffie published by Kids Can Press

Ah, summer vacation season…the change of scenery, the same ol’ family. Except when your family suddenly has a new member, like a stepparent.

So, escaping to the island is Lizzie’s best way to cope with the rising tensions at Gran’s place in Manitoba’s gold country. Even if she does start seeing visions…or ghosts…

So “who is Frances Rain” you wonder? Hope you’ve got plenty of flashlight batteries…
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Book info: Who Is Frances Rain? / by Margaret Buffie. Kids Can Press, 2007 [author’s website] [publisher site]

Recommendation: Lizzie is sure this summer will be awful – the Canadian gold rush country, all lakes and wilderness, was the kids’ special place with their grandmother, so why did Mom suddenly want to leave her law office and bring their new stepdad here for the summer?

Gran’s old lodge is the same, with board games for everyone and plenty of blueberry pie. Their across-the-lake neighbors are still the same, except 16 year old Alex has grown tall, towering over Lizzie and her big brother Evan. But Evan is awful to their stepdad, Mom’s good mood has vanished, and Gran tells Lizzie to stay away from Rain Island.

Of course, 15 year old Lizzie decides to escape the tension at the lodge and explore Rain Island on her own. When she finds an old pair of glasses that might have belonged to a woman prospector there, she begins to see ghosts or maybe visions of the past.

What are they trying to tell her? Why does she feel this strange connection to the island? When she and Alex start digging into the history of the island and the area’s gold rush days, the mystery becomes stranger than they ever could have imagined.

This great tale of suspense from noted Canadian author Margaret Buffie will have you wondering “who is Frances Rain?” with Lizzie and Alex until the very end. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

Dogtag Summer, by Elizabeth Partridge (fiction) – Vietnamese orphan, California challenges

May30

book cover of Dogtag Summer by Elizabeth Partridge published by BloomsburyFor most Americans, Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer. We rarely remember its 1868 origins as a remembrance of those who have died protecting our nation and our freedoms.

As her summer begins, 12 year old Tracy thinks it’ll be like most summers, but what she and pal Stargazer uncover changes everything she thought she knew about herself and her adoptive family.

The Vietnam War era was chaotic and divisive for countless families on both sides of the Pacific, with many questions and no simple solutions. Perhaps a few answers will shine through for Tracy after all…
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Book info: Dogtag Summer / Elizabeth Partridge. Bloomsbury, 2011. [author’s website] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

Recommendation: During the summer before 8th grade, Tracy starts having flashbacks to her childhood in Vietnam. Her adoptive parents have pictures of her arrival in the USA as a tiny 6 year old in 1975, but before that time, she has only an empty place inside her memories. As she and her friend Stargazer search in her garage, they find an ammo box and Army dogtags.

Now she dreams of her mother being away at DaNang as a laundry worker for the Americans, her uncle gone as a Viet Cong soldier, soldiers from both sides searching her grandmother’s hut in the jungle, families divided by war. How can she ask her adoptive father about the dogtags with another man’s name when he never talks about being in Vietnam?

As a Vietnamese-American, she was shunned by village neighbors and is taunted by California classmates. Sometimes, things are too quiet at her house now, but Stargazer’s easy-going parents accept her and welcome her to their place in the forest. When his peace-loving father sees the dogtags and calls the US soldiers in Vietnam “babykillers,” Tracy knows that she will have to be brave enough to ask her Dad about the past, about the dogtags, about why she came to this family in the US instead of another.

A story from the heart to go with the history book facts, readers will walk and dream with Tracy through that dogtag summer, through the questions and answers to better understanding of a difficult chapter in America’s history. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

Last Summer of the Death Warriors, by Francisco X. Stork (book review) – is growing up harder than dying young?

May5

book cover of Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X Stork published by Arthur A Levine BooksWhat does life mean when you know – without any doubt – that you are going to die way too young?

Is there even any sense in trying to live a good life when the specter of Death haunts your breakfast, lingers in the corners of your backpack, rustles the leaves of the tree you can no longer climb?

Two teenage guys try to find the balance – D.Q. knows he’s dying fast, Pancho might not care enough to make it through the summer himself…

Francisco X. Stork says on his blog that he concentrates first on being a good writer, then on being a good Latino writer. I’d say that he succeeds at both. Check out his Marcelo in the Real World, too.

Book info: The Last Summer of the Death Warriors / by Francisco X. Stork. Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic), 2010. 352 pgs. [author’s website] [publisher website]

My Recommendation: His sister dead just 3 months after their widowed father’s death – Pancho had promised to take care of Rosa, sweet Rosa, with her child’s mind in a young woman’s body. Why aren’t the police looking for the man who was with her when she died of “unidentified causes, no foul play”? At 17, Pancho is ready to find that man and make him pay for Rosa’s death.

But he’s not allowed to live alone at 17, gets kicked out of a foster home for fighting, and finds himself at St. Anthony’s orphanage, across town from his family’s trailer in the New Mexico desert where he watched the sunsets and worked with his father. Everyone works at St. Anthony’s; Pancho will help D.Q. whose cancer treatments have finally put him in a wheelchair.

D.Q.’s mother couldn’t handle his dad’s death several years ago and brought him to St. Anthony’s for the summer while she recovered. But summers and years went by with her hardly contacting him, until the cancer hit 6 months ago. Now she’s taking charge, ordering experimental treatments, but her son wants none of it.

Now D.Q. is writing the Death Warriors’ Manifesto, about how a true death warrior recognizes his someday-death and therefore lives every day till then in order to make a positive difference. Explaining that to everyday, non-philosophical Pancho is another way that D.Q. keeps going through the chemo treatments. Piecing together the clues leading to the man who was with Rosa is what keeps Pancho going. Seeing lovely, caring Marisol at Casa Esperanza during the chemo makes their lives more worthwhile.

Will Pancho find the man and avenge Rosa’s death?
Will D.Q.’s mother let him go back to St. Anthony’s after chemo?
Can both young men live like true death warriors?

A great story of friendships and choices, of really living versus just being alive. (one of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.